The present invention relates in general to a method and an apparatus for transmitting data in correspondence to a progress stage of a series of business processings, and more particularly to a method and an apparatus which are capable of carrying out suitable data transmission in business activities in which a series of business processings are carried out through the participation of many business processing sections or many persons in charge of the business processings.
While it has been popularized that a series of business processings utilizing a database are carried out by a computer, business processings based on the electronic transmission of data between the sections in charge of the business processing of interest, in which the information processing technology is utilized, have been rapidly increased in various business activities in business enterprises as the scale of networks have been enlarged, and also end user computing is improved due to open system and down sizing.
However, even through data exchange utilizing such information processing technologies is applied to a series of business processings utilizing the database, actually, information transmission in the business processings which are conventionally carried out by exchanging paper based cutforms, documents and papers between sections in charge of the business processings (or the persons in charge of the business processings) is merely replaced with processing in which a section in charge of a business processing produces cutforms, documents and the like as electronic data, and the data in units of the cutforms and the documents are transmitted/received to/from the next section in charge of the next business processing by utilizing online networks and the like. In other words, it is difficult to say that a series of business processings utilizing the database, and the exchange of the business data, between the sections in charge of the business processings utilizing online network are carried out closely in cooperation with each other.
In the present circumstances as described above, since data of cutforms is treated as the units of data delivery, when all of the data has become complete with respect to the cutforms in a certain section in charge of the business processing, all of the data is transmitted to the next section. Therefore, any section subsequent to the next section in charge of the subsequent business processings cannot be informed of contents of data until all of the data on the cutforms has been decided.